


The Way She Looks

by wlwedi



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:22:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wlwedi/pseuds/wlwedi
Summary: EDI decides it's time for her physical platform to start reflecting the passage of time.





	The Way She Looks

30

"Sam," EDI started, watching her wife stir in bed next to her. It would be time for her to wake up in 7 minutes, anyways, and EDI was tired of waiting to talk about the thoughts she had been developing all night. "I want my body to show physical age."

"Oh?" Sam asked, raising her eyebrows but refusing to open her eyes. "And how are you going to achieve that."

"I've reverted my hair back into individual strands and have attempted to style it in a more age appropriate fashion, assuming my age would match yours." This piqued Sam's curiosity, and she finally cracked her eyes open and looked over. EDI had spent two hours in front of the mirror while Sam slept attempting to replicate hairstyles she found on the extranet. Admittedly, her lack of ears was a bit of a complication but she was proud of the finished product: a haircut the same length of her original hair piece, but wavier and with soft bangs at the side of her face.

Sam smiled warmly up at her. "You look beautiful, as always, my love. But you know you don't have to change anything for me right?"

EDI nodded. She knew her wife would default to this line of reasoning, and she had been preparing for hours.

"Part of it is for you, yes. Part of it is simply for assimilation. Because of the Normandy, we are very much in the public eye, which is understandable. But not everyone in the galaxy is like Shepard, who will be here for dinner next week so don't forget. It would make our relationship more..." EDI paused, searching for the right word, "palatable to those who aren't as open minded as Shepard."

"That's fair." Sam said. "There are very few people like her, it's true." EDI laughed, which she had been doing proudly and often since she had perfected her humor and laughter subroutines.

"But," EDI said, drawing her wife back to the topic at hand, "it's also for me. I want to try new things. I want to experience change. I don't mind if I have to go to an engineer every 10 years to change, I want to know how you feel by feeling it alongside you." Sam smiled warmly at her and reached over to grab her hand and give it a squeeze.

"Okay then, what else do you want to do?" she asked, showing her support in the simple way she had perfected.

"Laughter lines." EDI said. Her research showed that at 30, humans could get frown lines too, but EDI wanted her face to reflect how she felt in the life that she had built with her family. As many hardships as she had endured with the crew of the Normandy, when she thought about her life, she felt... warm. She wanted her face to reflect that.

 

50

EDI walked back into their apartment on the Citadel to see her wife covered in flour and kneading some sort of bread dough. Sam had been trying to learn to bake, recently, and it was incredibly endearing.

"How was the salon?" Sam asked, grinning. "The salon" was what she called the mech specialist EDI had been working with to add the effects of age to her body.

"It was good," she said, walking in to set her bag down then hunting for something to wipe flour off of Sam's face. "Isabelle said hi, and said to tell you she just added some more facial lines this time." EDI smiled so her wife could see her eyes crinkle, which she knew she loved to see.

"It looks like your hair is curlier now, too." Sam observed, pointing at her wife and flinging more flour around their apartment.

"Yes, we've been working on the texture for a year and a half and we finally got it right." she said, wiping flour off her nose fondly.

"Well you look beautiful, as always. If you had told me back on the Normandy that you'd be showing signs of age before Miranda, I think I would have believed it." Sam joked. "I can't wait to point that out at the next crew reunion."

 

80

The door hissed open and EDI stepped through, much to her wife's delight.

"You look _old_!" Sam gasped with glee. EDI grinned back at her. Even after 60 years together she could never resist Sam's infectious moods. 

"Yes, that was the point, Sam." she laughed at her wife. Her face was now lined with "age" and her hair was smoothed into a smooth bun at the back of her head. Standing next to her wife, they looked the same age, despite EDI being made of metal. In the framed pictures of the crew they had covering the walls and tables, EDI looked like she was aging with the crew.

She knew she would outlast her crew's, but it felt like she was aging with them. She was enthralled by the feeling of changing alongside those who had changed in front of her when she was just a voice, and those who had changed _her_ when she downloaded into her physical form. She knew her life would be much longer than many of theirs, her wife's included, and she was reminded of that more and more every day as she watched Sam's movements become slower and more pained. She had been doing her best not to think about it, but in a way that made her feel more organic. It made her feel _alive_ to feel, even when the feelings were bad. As Shepard liked to remind her, bad feelings are a part of life, but we had to be careful to make sure they didn't _become_ our lives.

She looked in the mirror one last time, admiring her aged face, smiling to watch her face crinkle and fold like she saw in her wife's face when she got home every day. She loved what she saw because it reflected how she felt: alive, changed, tired from a hard past but still happy and intact.

 

150

Today had been three years since Sam had passed away. EDI was doing what she always did on this day: sitting next to Liara on the Normandy, backs against the elevator, staring down the memorial wall with a loaf of bread between them. It was Sam's recipe that EDI had learned to bake after she had died. EDI couldn't eat it, of course, but there was always someone who could. 

The two women looked tired. EDI looked much older, as her physical changes were modeled after humans, but Liara looked older than she had on the Normandy too. There was a weight on their faces that only the death of a loved one could give you, and a weariness in their eyes that showed just how much pain they were in.

Sam had been cremated, and had her ashes ejected into space, as she had wanted, so EDI had no tombstone to visit. Even if she did, she thought she would still be doing the same thing. She could feel Sam's presence aboard the ship, could see their budding relationship and EDI's budding humanity in the walls and the floors and the consoles. The ship had a new captain now, of course, but she never once said anything except "Welcome back" when EDI and Liara arrived yearly.

EDI was lucky to have her friend to share this with. She dreaded losing her, too, and having her list of people to grieve for become so long that she would eventually become a permanent installation aboard the Normandy again.

 

160

"I want my face to show the effects of years of grief." EDI said. Her new mech specialist smiled sadly at her and nodded. This would be the last change EDI made. She no longer had Sam to change alongside.


End file.
